2017 – A Blast of a Year for Noosphere

31 Dec 2017

It has become a tradition for Noosphere to take a look back at the previous year during the winter holidays to see how far we have come. As you know, it has been a very productive year, full of fun and new challenges! Here is a quick review of all that has happened.

AI Rush

The first event in 2017 was the AI Rush Conference, where 250 attendees learned from 10 AI experts in various fields from artificial intelligence, and networked with each other. Michal Kosinski, a Stanford University professor whose research on the analysis of data in social networks went viral, was a special guest at the conference.

Dribbble Meetup

In April Noosphere was able to host an event for designers for the first time. The Meetup brought together more than 150 designers from different regions of Ukraine. 9 speakers from Tubik studio, 1+1 Media, Wix.com, CoolStep, Chapps, and TDNA shared their ideas and experience.

Vernadsky Challenge

We received 230 applications for the Vernadsky Challenge this year from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, USA, India, Pakistan, Georgia, and Estonia. The most exciting moment at VC was when the legendary Mythbuster, Jamie Hyneman, joined the panel of judges!

Nasa Space App Challenge

A bit later at the end of April, Noosphere hosted its third April event. For the first time, Dnipro hosted the international hackathon, NASA Space Apps Challenge. The 48-hour event attracted young engineers, developers and enthusiasts to pit their innovativeness and creativity against Earth-based and space exploration issues.

NooMa Conference

In May, Noosphere Marketing Conference was the perfect place to meet noted experts in AdTech and learn more about recent market trends. The speakers shared their insights on the latest trends in a variety of marketing fields, like affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, traffic tracking, conversational commerce, and video marketing.

BestRoboFest

The beginning of the summer was marked with one of the largest tech events in Ukraine, BestRoboFest 2017. This year, the two-day family festival of robotics competitions, a contemporary art zone, and a technical exhibition was even larger than last year – breaking the 10,000 attendance mark! The spectators watched robot competitions and took part in various workshops and contests. The custom-built vehicles at the special exhibition, MonsterCarsUA, stole the show, and the owners of the best entries received $5000, $3000, and $1000 grants for first, second and third place respectively.

Noosphere Volley Beach IT Cup

In mid September Monastic Island on Dnipro River became the battleground for IT companies at a beach volleyball tournament. 27 teams from all over Ukraine competed for 2 days over prizes, awards and bragging rights.

Copter Race

This year the Copter Race competition reached the international level. We hosted a stage of the FAI Drone Racing World Cup in the F3U class. 40 pilots from 4 countries (Poland, Switzerland, Germany and Ukraine) competed during this spectator drone-battle. In addition to official competition, the event also included a Fan Сopter League, Free Style and a night show race.

FAI Cooperation

Global Technical Partnership

February 2, 2017, was a significant event for everyone involved in the air sports industry. The FAI, World Air Sports Federation, and Noosphere established a new strategic partnership to make Noosphere FAI’s Global Technical Partner. Given all the technical and scientific capacity of Noosphere, the partnership promised to start a technical revolution for the FAI, creating new momentum for this long-standing, international institution with 112 years of history.

“Best device for FAI”

Under the partnership agreement with the FAI, the student innovation tournament “Best deviсe for FAI” was held on May 27th. The goal was to find a way to automate the tracking and scoring process during hot-air ballooning competitions, as well as to transmit the data live to the scoreboard. Participants surprised the judges by developing solutions for the tournament that forced the judges to split the top prize between three teams from the Noosphere Engineering School, Cherkasy State Technological University and Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University.

World Games 2017 and CupNavigator

On July 20-30, Wroclaw, Poland hosted one of hottest events of the summer, the World Games 2017. This year’s games were simply historic, not only because of the number of new records made, but also in the new technology-driven way the scoring was measured. Noosphere introduced an innovative scoring system called Cup Navigator. This software solution optimized scoring and simplified competition data management. It was live-tested and worked like clockwork throughout the event to score paramotoring, glider aerobatics, and canopy piloting.

1st FAI International Drones Conference and Expo

On 1-3 of September, the first FAI International Drones Conference and Expo took place in Lausanne, Switzerland. It ran over three days and featured a mix of international speakers from the world of drones, tours and social events. Vladimir Vasiliev, EOS CTO and Mikhail Ryabokon, who is a co-founder of Noosphere, also participated in the conference with their presentations.

FAI Award Companion of Honour

The highlight for Noosphere of the 111th FAI General Conference was the FAI Awards Ceremony. During the ceremony, Max Polyakov was nominated by FAI President, Frits Brink as an FAI Companion of Honour, which was accepted by a vote of the body of the conference. This award is not given out lightly, only in recognition of eminent service rendered to the FAI.

Noosphere Engineering School

My Police

Representatives from the MyPolice app participated in 2 major exhibitions in 2017 – XIV International specialized exhibition “Weapons and Security 2017” and the 20th session of Milipol Paris, a worldwide event for homeland security, and demonstrated the system to international delegations and guests of the exposition.

According to statistics taken at the end of the year, the application now has almost 30,000 users and the SOS button was used 1,500 times. In addition, the application now operates in 4 more regions in Ukraine.

ArtOS

In November, Petro Poroshenko, during the greetings on occasion of Ukrainian Artillery and Missile Forces Day, stressed that ArtOS, an artillery firing control system developed by NES, is currently used by more than 70% of national artillery and missile forces in Ukraine. He also mentioned that professional systems like this help significantly automate the decision-making processes of the artillery forces.

New perspectives

During the past year the Noosphere Engineering School (NES) came up with 3 new educational programs in engineering and software development. Follow NES to participate in the next semester. Also in December 2, the new scientific development tournament “Star Track” was held for the first time at the Noosphere Engineering School. It was a great opportunity for young scientists to exhibit their unique developments. It is worth noting that Association Noosphere and Max Polyakov plan to support events like these for youth regularly. Star Track will be a regular tournament aimed at motivating students to explore rocket and space technology.

________Wrap up:

2018 is incredibly symbolic for Noosphere. Exactly 100 years ago, the renowned scientist Vladimir Vernadsky founded the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In addition, he seeded a great dream, a great idea, and a hope for the victory of knowledge and humanity on a global scale and named it the noosphere. All the work that the Noosphere team does moves us step-by-step towards the realization of his idea.

We are excited to continue in the new year and are ready to face new challenges and achieve higher goals.